John Maynard Keynes, then a rising young economist, participated in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as chief representative of the British Treasury and advisor to Prime Minister David Lloyd George. He resigned after desperately trying and failing to reduce the huge demands for reparations being made on Germany. The Economic Consequences of the Peace is Keynes' brilliant and prophetic analysis of the effects that the peace treaty would have both on Germany and, even more fatefully, the world.
Beyond the Wall is the first book, in either English or German, to tell the whole story of the extraordinary revolution that demolished the Berlin Wall, ended the Cold war, and tore apart the Soviet regime. Elizabeth Pond, former Moscow and European correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, was an eyewitness to the dramatic events of 1989-92 and to the fifteen years of relations between Germany and Eastern Europe leading up to them. Pond weaves together in riveting prose the strands of events that are usually recounted separately. Rather than looking just at the East German revolt or the process of unification that created a new nation, she traces the interaction of these events and their diplomatic consequences for Europe. Pond shows the political, economic, and social forces at work--leading up to the unification, during the transition process, and in the aftermath. Looking at the European framework, she explains how significantly the European Community and its move toward integration both affected and were affected by German unification. The book contains a wealth of new information form hundreds of interviews with top German and American policymakers, East German Politburo members and average German citizens. It also incorporates up-to-date research on such topics as the Stasi secret police and the midlife crisis of the German left. Pond concludes with an assessment of the roles of the United States and a unified Germany in the new Europe. Calling for a continued partnership between the United States and Germany, who "have come through a common baptism of fire since the fall of the Berlin Wall," Pond casts an optimistic eye toward the future.
Since German unification in October, 1990, arguments have raged as to whether the integration process of the former East Germany into the western system has been a success. These essays offer fresh insight and perspectives explaining the effects of unification on Germany and the EU as a whole.
Today the problems of reunification seem to feature more often in the international spotlight than the benefits. This timely volume offers a reassessment of Germany's postwar development from its inception through to reunification, including a thorough examination of the implications for economic, political and social policies. The impressive team of contributors include leading names in the history of modern Germany, together with some of the ablest younger scholars in the field. They are: Hartmut Berghoff, David Childs, Immanuel Geiss, Graham Hallett, Klaus Larres, Terry McNeill, Torsten Opelland, Richard Overy, Stephen Padgett, Panikos Panayi, and Mathias Siekmeier.
While unification has undoubtedly had major effects on Germany's political economy, the pattern of current policy-making preferences was established at an earlier stage, in particular, at the beginning of the 'Kohl-era' in 1982. This essentially neo-liberal pattern can be seen to have dominated the modalities chosen to guide Germany through the process of unifi cation and was mirrored in developments in other OECD countries and in particular within the EU. This book demonstrates that the three policy imperatives (neo-liberal structural reform, European monetary integration, and unification) produced a policy-mix which, together with other structural economic and demographic factors, has had disappointing results in all three areas and hampered Germany's overall economic development.
This book is the first attempt to bridge the current divide between studies addressing "economic nationalism" as a deliberate ideology and movement of economic 'nation-building', and the literature concerned with more diffuse expressions of economic "nationness"—from national economic symbols and memories, to the "banal" world of product communication. The editors seeks to highlight the importance of economic issues for the study of nations and nationalism, and its findings point to the need to give economic phenomena a more prominent place in the field of nationalism studies. The authors of the essays come from disciplines as diverse as economic and cultural history, political science, business studies, as well as sociology and anthropology. Their chapters address the nationalism-economy nexus in a variety of realms, including trade, foreign investment, and national control over resources, as well as consumption, migration, and welfare state policies. Some of the case studies have a historical focus on nation-building in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while others are concerned with contemporary developments. Several contributions provide in-depth analyses of single cases while others employ a comparative method. The geographical focus of the contributions vary widely, although, on balance, the majority of our authors deal with European countries.
A study of the economic and social changes which shaped the movement for German unification. The author emphasizes the effect of industrialism on urban life, traces the decline of manorialism in agriculture and seeks to show that the political movements of these years were profoundly influenced by the economic transition from agrarianism to capitalism.
